The present disclosure relates generally to information handling systems, and more particularly to a network infrastructure capability detection.
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option is an information handling system (IHS). An IHS generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements may vary between different applications, IHSs may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in IHSs allow for IHSs to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, IHSs may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
IHSs may be configured to communicate using one or more communication networks. FIG. 1 illustrates an embodiment of a traditional open system interconnect (OSI) reference model 130. As should be readily understood by a person having ordinary skill in the art, common responsibilities assigned to communication protocols in the OSI model relegates guaranteed delivery of messages to OSI Layer 4 or the “Transport” Layer. OSI layer 4, the “Transport” layer is where, communication protocols such as the transport control protocol (TCP) and the user datagram protocol (UDP) reside. The OSI model was proposed at a time when the lower infrastructure layers, such as Ethernet at Layer 2, was a “best-effort” delivery system. Thus, a mechanism was required to re-transmit the missed Layer 2 packets and this mechanism was embodied at Layer 4 in the TCP protocol for Internet Protocol (IP) implementations.
More recently, more robust Ethernet infrastructure technology systems have been implemented than these previous systems. Credit based flow-control and rate-limiting, having a more assured delivery, implies that transport protocol decisions may be made based in part on the quality of the underlying network infrastructure. From this, certain efficiencies may be obtained for communications. However, guaranteed-delivery Ethernet technologies may negate the use of TCP in applications that are contained within a Local Area Network (LAN). Therefore, a system may be required to determine the quality of the underlying physical and link layers in order to make these transport layer decisions. Once a determination of the quality of the underlying physical and link layers is successful, communication systems may transport iSCSI over UDP instead of TCP or to deliver RDMA requests via Ethernet instead of TCP. Other protocols may also be available. Because UDP is a much lighter-weight transport, increased throughput and decreased CPU utilization is therefore possible. Using Ethernet tunneled protocols alone may then, in large part, reduce or eliminate the higher layer protocols over these better quality Ethernet networks.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an improved network infrastructure capability detection absent the disadvantages discussed above.